Tree Woman

In a trip to Oregon, my sister, Ruth Rosimo took me to see the Columbia River Gorge that is just east of Portland.  I was in awe of the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and an art quilt that I call Tree Woman was created out of the inspiration of that visit.  Thank you, Ruth for your kindness.

People will tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up.  In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions including yours.  Ken Hakuta

 

Detail of Tree Woman

Tree Woman 18.5” x 22.5” October 2003 Hand painted with dye on cotton fabric, commercial and hand dyed fabrics in border, machine quilting

Tree Woman is sold.

Creating a Vision Board

Creating a Vision Board of my hopes and dreams for 2012 with help from my friends


A vision board is a creation of images that express what a person wants in her/his life, or what makes one feel happy, passionate about life. I create mine on a bulletin board so that it can be a growing, shifting, set of images that reflects the changes happening in my life.
 

Last fall, I had taken my Vision Board apart during a massive clearing and reorganization of my studio.  I have wanted to create a new one for many months but it felt like too big a project to take on.  When I got invited to a small gathering of women to create one on New Year’s Day, I was thrilled at the thought.  I spent some time before we gathered locating images that appealed to me—for their meaning?  No, because they were interesting, beautiful, or had some appeal that I could not give meaning to yet. 

In preparation for this Vision Board making, we smudged each other with sage. Dried sage is burned and the smoke created is fanned over and around a person by another. This is a Native American tradition that helps a person focus her intention and it clears away confusion. 

Making a collage is one of my most favorite activities.  It’s an art form that involves images, and words, and colors and design and movement and unity and balance and space.  I like to layer the images to give the artwork depth.  The Vision Board feels successful when I am pleased with how the end result looks.  This often takes moving images or adjusting how they are put together to get the look that works for me.  If I find another image has to become part of the Vision Board, I can add it easily by removing some pins and shifting images around.

Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project 2011

 A collection of more than 20,000 Sketchbooks including mine traveled around the country to museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and more throughout 2011.  Now the Sketchbooks live in the Brooklyn Art Library. The  sketchbook text paper is high quality 100% recycled. Each sketchbook has a bar code attached to the outside back cover. Specs 5.25 W x 7.25 H, 32 pages, 70lb text stock, 100% recycled paper.  

The theme that I played with was called Jackets, Blankets, and Sheets.  You can check out my collage sketch book in the digital library: Arthouse Coop 

And if you want to see more, go to Brooklyn Art Library website and look under the tab Digital Library:    
http://www.arthousecoop.com/brooklynartlibrary

Enjoy getting inspired!

Library Paradise

Musings on creating a book quilt

I’ve been thinking about how to create a book quilt for awhile.  I’d made some sketches of a soft chair with a cat and a book.  “No,” I decided, “too much emphasis on chairs and cats.”  And one day when I was looking for images of open books, I had the idea to photograph an old dictionary. Open book, to the page of a loon and I took several pictures.  Then I wanted the vantage point of the pages of the book on its side as it lies open.  Oh, nice pictures due to the soft green wall in the background showing.  Oh good, some interesting pictures of the stitching to hold the book together.  Creating books fascinates me almost as much as working with mixed media.

I played with the images and put some fabric and book images together.  I did this playing with the images on my computer.  I cut 5 pieces of fabric into rectangles 8.5” x 11” and then treated the fabric and hung it up on a drying rack to dry.  When the fabric was dry, I ironed it flat and placed freezer paper on the wrong side of the fabric.  And then I taped the edge that would feed into the printer to allow it to flow through and print without jamming.  I printed 3 sheets of lovely book images.

 

I thought I was complete and then I decided to add brads, and a bookmark.  That took a few more tools.

I enjoy adding interesting ephemera to my quilts.  In this quilt there are 3 brads, one braided embroidery floss bookmark, and one saying.

 When I felt complete, I added my signature and date.  I like the sepia color for the signature.

 Library Paradise, 12" x 12".